


Like a Shadow That Never Leaves

by DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Diary fic, F/F, general danvers, journal fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-17
Updated: 2018-01-17
Packaged: 2019-03-06 05:10:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,117
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13404144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered/pseuds/DangersUntoldHardshipsUnnumbered
Summary: Tumblr user femslashhistorian asked for the following prompt:“There was a connection between Alex and Astra but Alex had never been able to wrap her head around it before she needed to kill Astra to save Hank. What if Astra had actually not really died that day and to Alex surprise, ten years later Alex and Astra meet again.”





	Like a Shadow That Never Leaves

December 7th, 2025

I really thought that I would go crazy not being on the job for this long, but I think I needed this in ways I didn’t even understand.  J’onn was smart for seeing that I needed a sabbatical, which I didn’t want to see, myself.  Even Kara needs a break sometimes, and she’s Kryptonian.

The weather has been too rough the last few days, so no hikes, and no hunting, but that’s okay.  The cabin window is too frosty to see through, so it’s been jigsaw puzzles and deer burgers and meditation.  Buddha says,  _We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves._   I need to find my own shadow again, I think.

Maggie knew that the part of me that hadn’t accepted my sexuality wasn’t the only part of me that was stumbling and confused.  It’s why she left.  My sadness was too much for her.  Sometimes I think it would be too much for anyone.  But it’s wound around my bones, and I don’t know that I can ever separate it from me.  I don’t drink to cope with it like I used to in my thirties; it’s part of me now, and comfortable.

The work I do for the DEO is important but the weight of my mistakes has gotten too much.  I’m hoping I can go back with a fresh perspective and contribute positively again.  The weight of every wrong call was starting to get heavy.  

Of course, maybe no call weighed heavier than killing Astra.  Kara has forgiven me, but I don’t think I completely have forgiven myself.  And the pain I caused Kara … I’m not sure it’s the only reason why.  

But the fire is getting a little low and I need to bring in another cord of firewood.

 

December 8th, 2025

The snow finally stopped late last night.  I bundled up and went outside for a little, just to get a look at a clear night sky again after three days of relentless snow.  It’s beautiful up here.  The biting air is fresher than anything I ever imagined.  The moon was so sharp and clear.  I thought I saw a shooting star, but when I checked telemetry (because even on sabbatical, yes, I brought my laptop), there was nothing about any meteor showers that ought to be visible up here.  It made my heart skip a little, to think about all of the people that the stars have brought into my life, and all the times I touched those stars myself.  You can forget how magical your world is until you step away from it and see it with fresh eyes.

I love my world.  And that’s why I’ve always been willing to fight for it.  And that’s why I’ve been willing to accumulate regrets for it, stacking up in a corner of my mind like firewood.  There haven’t been many people who understood that about me.  That I do things I know I will regret, but I do them willingly, because someone has to do the things nobody else wants to do.

 

December 9th, 2025

I woke this morning to the sound of someone pounding on my door.  Yes, this cabin door, up in the goddamn mountains, underneath several inches of snow.  I shook my head to clear it and walked to the door, ready to see almost anything.  A park ranger.  A bear.  A White Walker.

What I wasn’t prepared for was finding Astra.  Astra, who I pierced through the heart with a Kryptonite blade ten years ago.  Astra, who I always secretly felt understood me even though we were on opposite sides.  Astra who I almost turned toward the light.  She was dressed in dark blue and dusted in frost.  I let her in, dumbfounded and silent.

We sat staring at each other at the table for a while before either of us spoke.  Finally, she told me that she was glad to see me.  I got her a hot cup of coffee and then we spent another hour in silence.  She’s resting in my bed now while I pace the rag rug in front of the fire.  I don’t know how she’s alive or why she’s here.  The grief in me has been temporarily displaced, but by what?  I don’t know.

 

December 10th, 2025

Once she woke up again, I apologized for killing her.  She said no apology was necessary.  She had faked her own death.  It had all been an elaborate ruse.  She wanted out of the war and didn’t want to put Kara in danger.  Not even Non was aware of what she had done, only the two trusted science lieutenants who had revived her and then aided in her escape.

She didn’t say how she’d found me but I didn’t care about that.  She’s brilliant. There are a million ways she could have found me.  I wanted to know why.  She said, “Because I regret that you were left to feel the sorrow of causing Kara harm.”

She’d already been to see Kara, and they’d made their peace.  And now she has come to make that same peace with me.  With the war long over, I guess I can’t see why we shouldn’t.

 

December 10th, 2025

She’s lying on the rug in front of the fire with her eyes closed.  She seems tired.  Not physically; she’s lost nothing in that department.  But spiritually.  Emotionally.  She hasn’t told me much about where she’s been, I just know that she’s been mostly stuck grieving alone.  I can’t say that doesn’t ring a little too true for me.

One thing she said to me as we sat by the fire earlier was that she understood how hard it was for me to do what I did, to do what I believed amounted to taking her life.  She said she recognized that I wanted to bring her over to our side, far more than I wanted to hurt her.  She looked me dead in the eye and said, “Like all the best warriors, you have a great many regrets that lay heavy on your shoulders.”

I couldn’t really argue.

 

December 11th, 2025

It’s about 2 am.  She’s in my bed and I’m watching her do that Kryptonian “sleeping but not really” thing.  We talked for a long time tonight, ate deer burgers, and traded war stories.  There’s something about being in the company of someone else whose experiences mirror your own in ways that you haven’t shared with other people.  Even her struggles with trying to live up to the model sister, rebelling, taming her anger and alienation into war-as-an-act-of-love.  And for the first time, it hit me.

It hit me why I had felt so wrong about killing her, beyond what it meant for my relationship with Kara.  A part of me had understood her, had wanted to know her, wanted to be closer to her in ways that I didn’t even understand at the time.  Maggie was the first time I was in love with a woman where I was aware of it, and ready to pursue it. But Astra… Astra had struck a chord in me and I couldn’t begin to admit to myself what it was at the time.  I had told myself that the flutter in my stomach when she touched my cheek that night was fear, but it was something more complicated.  

 

December 11th, 2025

So she woke up in the middle of the night while I was watching her and said, “Alexandra, I can hear you sighing as if the weight of the world is on your shoulders.  Do you wish me to leave?”

But I didn’t.  I didn’t want her to leave.  I had been sitting in that rocking chair by the fire, gazing at her shape lying in the bed, wanting to go lay down with her but I didn’t dare.  She had not, I was sure, come here for that.

So no, I said, I didn’t want her to leave.  And then she said, “Then come here and be beside me.  It is very cold, even with the fire, and I am not bothered by it, but surely you must be.”

What could I do?  I shuffled in there in my flannel pajamas and got into the bed with her.  It was like laying down with a furnace.  I mumbled some half-assed joke about usually when a girl tries to get me into bed she buys me a drink first.  Astra gave me a mildly confused look.  “There is nowhere to buy drinks anywhere near here and I do not have the necessary currency in any case.”

So I just laughed, and then she put an arm around my waist and drew me closer.  I knew she could hear my heartbeat speed up a little.  She asked, “Is this acceptable?”

I said it was acceptable but that I didn’t want any confusion about what she wanted out of it.  She didn’t understand.  I wanted to be closer to her, and she was a warm body, and she felt good, but I had complicated feelings, and I didn’t want anyone to get hurt emotionally.  

The best thing about Astra is her brutal frankness.  She said, “I want a moment of tenderness with someone who understands how much I need it.  And I know that you do.  You always did.”

We kissed until I fell asleep. I woke up still in her arms.  I’ve made breakfast and now we’re talking about quantum singularities and magnetic fields.  I’m so fucking confused right now and maybe it will all evaporate the second we leave this cabin but for now?  I can’t remember the last time I felt this good.

 

December 14th, 2025

I stopped journaling for a couple of days, because I have only a few days left here before I go back to my life and I wanted to spend my time living them rather than writing about them.  Astra has been with me and it has been energizing and amazing and strange and I’m wondering how we were ever on opposite sides of a war.  How were we ever enemies?  How did I put a sword through this woman’s chest?  Who the hell ever gets a chance to wipe clean a regret so thoroughly?

I took her hunting and we crouched together in the snow and waited for a young buck to prance into view.  She took me flying over the crystalline mountain tops under the cold moonlight, the way Kara used to do.  It made me think of “Landslide”:   _“If you see my reflection, in the snow covered hills…”_  I started reading to her from some of my Buddhist books.  She liked this one line most:  

_Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment._

It seemed appropriate, I guess, given our situation.  

 

December 15th, 2025

Her arms are strong.  Her skin is warm.  She smells like starlight. She calls me “Brave One.”  I call her “General” and she always whispers that that hasn’t been her name in a long time.  But she likes it anyway, I can tell.  I can’t hear a heartbeat the way she can, but I can feel her pulse the soft, imperfect human way, my fingers curled around her wrist.  She definitely likes it.

We made love last night.  It hadn’t occurred to me back then that she might have wanted me.  Or that I had wanted her.  The connection I’d felt was strange and persistent, an annoying itch that I could never find the source of so I just tried to ignore it.  Ten years later, we’re both different.  Things are different.  There’s room for us to explore each other and scratch that itch.

I know my body now.  I know what it means to love a woman now.  I know how to kiss every inch of her and give her all the softness she has craved and not been able to have.  I know how to let go and let our bodies connect in ways that our minds can’t do.  I know how to savor, and go slowly, and let myself enjoy a moment.  I know how to simply lay in a woman’s arms and just be, just exist in beauty.  Regardless of what is ahead of me.  Regardless of what is behind.

She understands this.  She feels it too.

 _We are shaped by our thoughts; we become what we think. When the mind is pure, joy follows like a shadow that never leaves._   


End file.
